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The 2018 edition of the Material. PJ Rountree/courtesy Material

This week is all about Miami, but in about two months, a good chunk of the art crowd will meet up once more, in beautiful Mexico City, for a fresh batch of fairs, exhibitions, and general revelry. The anchors of those festivities are the Zona Maco fair and Material, the intrepid satellite devoted to the new, which today detailed plans for its 2019 edition, running February 7–10.

Material will be appearing for the second time at the Frontón México, an Art Deco–style sporting center to which it moved last year. It’s located near the capital city’s historic center and will again be transformed by the local architecture firm APRDELESP so that it can house 73 exhibitors from 22 countries, including Croy Nielsen (of Vienna), Lyles & King (New York), and Jan Kaps (Cologne), who are among the 29 newcomers, as well as repeat attendees like Labor (Mexico City), Document (Chicago), and LambdaLambdaLambda (Prishtina, Kosovo).

The fair’s creative director, Brett William Schultz, and its exhibitor liaison, Rodrigo Feliz, said in an email that Material has signed a multi-year deal with Frontón Mexico, which they added will allow them “to continue perfecting what already works well, rather than having to reinvent the fair from the ground up yet again.”

As in past years, there will be a diverse array of special projects on offer at Material, including a third iteration of its performance program, “IMMATERIAL,” which is being handled by Michelangelo Miccolis. He has “opened up new possibilities for exhibiting performance works in an art-fair context,” Schultz and Feliz said, “and this next edition is going to generate all sorts of weird social dynamics in the fair—in a really exciting way, of course.” Among the artists on tap are Débora Delmar, Dora García, and Roman Ondak.

And there will be a new section devoted to artist books and arts publications, “READING MATERIAL,” though “it’s definitely not a typical art book fair,” the two organizers noted. “It’s going to look more like a massive picnic, and there’s going to be a ball pit and bars and all sorts of activities happening there.” Which sounds ideal.

The Lower Manhattan bar Beverly’s is once again reprising its role as a presenter (in a locker room!). And this sounds particularly thrilling: Preteen Gallery, a storied Mexico City space, will be involved in offering what’s being billed as a “closing act” for the fair.

Asked what about the general mood of Mexico’s art scene right now, Schultz and Feliz replied that it is “definitely optimistic. We’ve got a brand new president, Andres Manuel López Obrador, and a new mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, who both aim to make arts and culture a much higher priority than they’ve been in the past.

“There’s more eyes on the Mexico City art scene than there have ever been before, and this new generation of organizers, curators, and artists that’s coming up here is just really smart, savvy, and ambitious. There seem to be golden years ahead.”

The full exhibitor list for Material 2019 follows below.

PRINCIPAL SECTION
ALMANAQUE fotográfica, Mexico City
Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm
Aoyama Meguro, Tokyo
ARREDONDO \ AROZARENA, Mexico City
breve, Mexico City
Clint Roenisch, Toronto
Croy Nielsen, Vienna
Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin
DOCUMENT, Chicago
Emanuel Layr, Vienna / Rome
ELASTIC Gallery, Stockholm
Et al., San Francisco
FIERMAN, New York City
Future Gallery, Berlin / Mexico City
Galería Agustina Ferreyra, Mexico City
Galería Alegría, Madrid
Galerie Jerome Poggi, Paris
Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich
Gallery Luisotti, Los Angeles
Gaudel de Stampa, Paris
Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles
GIANNI MANHATTAN, Vienna
Hannah Barry Gallery, London
Ilan Karpio, Lima
Jack Hanley Gallery, New York City
Jan Kaps, Cologne
joségarcía ,mx, Mexico City / Merida
LABOR, Mexico City
LambdaLambdaLambda, Pristina
Lodos gallery, Mexico City
Lulu, Mexico City
Lyles & King, New York City
M. LeBlanc, Chicago
Macaulay & Co. Fine Art, Vancouver
NERI|Barranco, Mexico City
NF/ NIEVES FERNÁNDEZ, Madrid
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York City
No Conformism, Lausanne
NoguerasBlanchard, Madrid / Barcelona
NOME, Berlin
Projet Pangée, Montreal
RIBOT, Milan
Roman Road, London
Satélite, Querétaro
SKETCH, Bogotá
Sultana, Paris
SUPRAINFINIT GALLERY, Bucharest
T H E P I L L ®, Istanbul
UNTILTHEN, Paris
UPFOR, Portland
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PROJECTS
Bad Reputation, Los Angeles
Chez Mohamed, Asnieres-Sur-Seine
Deslave, Tijuana
Destiny’s Atelier, Oslo
EMBAJADA, San Juan
Field Projects, New York City
Galleria Macca, Cagliari
incontemporary, Monterrey
Janet40, Mexico City
LADRÓNgalería, Mexico City
M23, New York City
MARGEN, Santiago de Chile
NSFW/SVILOVA, Gothenburg
PIEDRAS, Buenos Aires
PROGRESO, Mexico City
Sans titre (2016), Paris
stadium, Berlin
Syndicate, Cologne
Ulterior Gallery, New York City

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
Beverly’s, NYC
Preteen Gallery, Mexico City